Statistics

Statistics are useless until interpreted and interpretations are inherently biased. So, I'm going to throw out some data that I have found regarding aging in Amerika. Then I'll try to interpret some of it and perhaps speculate on the meanings. You can draw your own conclusions. You may be surprised just how bleak “The Golden Years” are for many Americans.

Just to use as comparisons: the median income in the US is about $53,000 and the median age is about 37.

Now for the data dump.

Fifteen percent of Amerikans are over 60. The average US lifespan for males is 76, for females 81. Oddly, if you make it to 62 your projected lifespan jumps to 84. There are more people over 65 now than anytime in US history. They tend to be concentrated in four states: Florida, West Virginia, Maine and Pennsylvania have the highest percentages. Nineteen percent of males over 65 and 35% of Females live alone. Seventy one percent of Males and 45% of females over 65 are married. Seventy two percent of those over 65 make less than $35K per year. Thirty four percent make under $15K per year. Twenty four percent make at or just above the official poverty income.

Kind of bleak when you look at it.

What can we derive from this? You will live longer than you think or planned for. You are likely, especially if you are a woman, to end your life alone. Also, you are very likely to be poor or near to it. That's it: old, lonely and broke. This in the “richest” country in the world.

So much for “The Golden Years.” I'd say more like “The Lead Years.” Not like The Waltons.

These are just a few of the reasons why minimalism is valuable to older people.

I'll talk more about this more in future posts.

Mike

Yup

Perceptions

If perception truly is everything, then the old in Amerika are in trouble.

Amerika is a youth obsessed country. It is also a capitalistic consumer oriented country. All the power of capitalism goes into (via advertising, etc.) creating and maintaining this obsession.

Take women as an example. If you are female in Amerika, you must always look 25. You must be slim, long-haired, sexually alluring, preferably blond and dress youthfully. This goes a long way toward answering the question why so many women who are 40+ are so fat, unhappy, depressed and bitchy. Simply put, there is no reasonable way for most of them to meet cultural expectations. Either they let themselves go (fatties abound in the US) or the resort to grotesquenesses to measure up (extreme diet and exercise, plastic surgery, etc.) The can't win so depression abounds.

Most women have known that horrible moment when a young, attractive man looks right through them. They have become culturally invisible. Unless they belong to the tiny class of hairy, man hating, doctrinaire feminists, they are shocked and hurt.

Men suffer from all this too, but not as much. Younger women will sometimes actually see value in an older man. Rarely, but sometimes. And cultural invisibility come later for men. Corvettes and condos help. Still, the same moment will arrive and so will the hurt and shock.

This is not as simple as all men are pigs or all women are bitches. In fact, the perception that we don't exist is created by the capitalist media and advertisers. What we do is buy into it.

I will explore other non male/female perceptions about the old in future texts.

So a question: in France you see lovely older women dressed alluringly (but not like 20 year olds) who are slim, can run in high-heels over cobble stones and exude sexuality. You often see them with younger men, who are clearly entranced. Why there and not here?

Mike

Prelude

"Sailing to Byzantium" - W. B. Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
---Those dying generations---at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come. 

Old

So what is old? If I'm going to talk about aging we need to come to an understanding, an agreement on terms.

Traditionally, adulthood begins a 18, middle-age at 30 and old age at 60. By those standards, at 62, I'm old.

But is it that simple? I know middle-age octogenarians, 50 year old adolescents and old 30 somethings; so there must be more to this than the common categories provide.

I think there are many factors at work here: your past, your genes, your health, your attitude, your finances, etc. A hard life of poverty can make one old early. Pessimism and depression can as well. Chronic illness will wear you out too.

I often hear, “you're only as old as you feel.” Nonsense. Too many variables in the word feel.

I think the answer is totally personal. We all age and we all die. When is irrelevant. A Zen drill sergeant once told me, “you don't get older than dead.” I saw 19 year olds die; they were old.

Old for all of us is the same thing. As Chief Justice Potter Stewert said when referring to pornography: “I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.” Substitute old for pornography and it remains true: you'll know it when you become it.

Me, I'm just a pup at 62. You?

Mike

Maintenance

"There's birth, there's death, and in between there's maintenance." Tom Robbins

Maintenance. I hate maintenance. What is maintenance? Everything that we have to do to maintain the accepted status quo.

Take dusting. Is there a more boring fruitless activity on earth? You dust, you wait, the dust returns. All housework falls under maintenance: dusting, vacuuming, doing dishes, everything cleaning related. All that you accomplish is the forlorn opportunity to repeat the process endlessly. Ad nauseum. Until death you do depart.

Or personal hygiene? How much of your life has been spent brushing your teeth, taking showers, shaving? A whole lot. Yet unless you are a hermit, maintain you must. Given all our wonderful technology why can't we invent self-cleaning teeth. How could that be harder than going to the moon? After all, we've had self-cleaning ovens forever.

Washing clothes, cutting grass, changing oil: all meaningless maintenance. Do you really enjoy any of it?

I recently joined a gym. You might think that is some kind of meaningful activity. I work hard and regularly there. I already see and feel results. But why? At 62, it is unlikely that I will end up on the cover of Men's Fitness, that 23 year old super models will fling themselves upon my buff carcass or that I'll win an Olympic gold.

Nope. It's really just a pathetic attempt to stave off inevitable decrepitude; to maintain my faltering body for a while longer. Maintenance. That's all it is.

I think that (if we think) the older we get the more meaningless maintenance becomes. We know that the end of maintenance is death. We know it. Yet we maintain, because it is expected, because we always have. And we always will.

One virtue of minimalism is that the less space and stuff you have, the less maintenance you have to perform. Yes!

Mike

Time, Time, Time...

What if you didn't have to be anywhere or do anything other than a few medical appointments? Of course, you would still have maintenance tasks, but not many. What would you do with all that time?

One of the central tenets of minimalism is that you give up money for time to do what you want to.

If you have some overwhelming passion like painting or music or writing then you are in heaven.

But what if like me, you don't.

In the Army if you got asked why you weren't doing anything the standard safe reply was that you were AWF – awaiting further orders. We have been taught since very early on by parents, teachers, officers, bosses, etc. where to be, when to be there, what to do and for how long. In other words, we have been taught to await further orders.

Suddenly there are no orders to follow. This feels very weird. It can lead to a type of paralysis. You are suddenly responsible for yourself.

At the moment, I am confronting this problem.

I am 62, live alone and have few nearby friends. On top of that I have never been a joiner and don't have much money.

There are still a lot of free or cheap activities out there that I might enjoy. But I don't enjoy doing them alone.

So what to do with all that time? So far I have joined a gym and attend it regularly. I write this blog. But that's about it. That still leaves a lot of time. There are books to read and movies to watch, but that can be done to boredom.

I intend to solve this problem. I'll keep you up to date on how as I figure it out.

Until then,

Mike

The Numbers

It is said that numbers don't lie, so I'm going to give a close accounting of the numbers over this month.

My SS check is $1170. I have $1398.72 in savings. That's it, my whole financial world. The goal is to live off the $1170 exclusively. The savings are for bumps like car insurance and inspections

$1170 per month = $39 per day. However, there are also fixed expenses that must be paid, which lower the daily amount.

Rent: $233. Electric: $150. Internet: $55. Phone: $50. Gym: $10 This comes to $498 which reduces my daily allotment to $22.40 per day. Food, fuel and everything else must come out of that number.

There are possibilities for cuts. I could lose my Internet and just go to cafes when I needed to. I have done that before. It works, but as I use my wireless kindle for entertainment, I'll hold off for now.

Can one man live on $22.40 per day in America? We will see by closely monitoring each amount spent daily. For example, yesterday I spent a total of $13.98. I will keep a daily count and report it in my posts.

Attitude is a big part of this. If I find that I am feeling deprived that counts against the experience.

For now,

Mike

By Way of Introduction

So today I got my gummint social security check (actually direct deposit) of $1170. My experiment in minimalism begins today with this post.

So what is minimalism? It is actually a philosophy of life. It's core can be found in the question, “how much is enough.” It simply asks the question about your stuff, “what is necessary; what adds value to my life?” The answer will vary greatly from person. There is no dogma involved. You proceed by eliminating everything that doesn't fulfill the answers to those quest. The change involved can be marginal to radical. I will discuss it more later and provide information on the best books and blogs that I have found.

Although my target audience is aging baby-boomers, most of the material might be of use to anyone.

The possible topics are endless: food, clothing, housing, health care, transportation and entertainment are but a few. I will be looking at all these and more.

In my next post I will break that $1170 down for you and provide complete financial transparency on-going.

Until then,

Mike

Focus

I've decided that this blog needs a focus. So, I'll mainly be writing about how to live, hopefully well, on $1170 per month. That is my Social Security check. That's it. Can it be done? How? I think so. I'll let you know as we go along.

This will give me a chance to write about my two main interests: minimalism and anarchism.

But the real focus will be on being old, living well on little money and being happy.

A lot of the essays will be aimed at older readers, but I think will be of use to younger folk as well.

The first post will be next Wednesday, because that's check day for me. That's right, you don't get your check on the first, it depends on your birthday, so mine is the third Wednesday of the month.

See you then.